Write A Non-Fiction Book In A Day

Getting Prepared

Make a list of what you need to prepare and familiarise yourself with. We will be covering all of these, but you might want to take a look at some of them first.

• Set aside some time

• Kindle Direct Publishing account

• WORD – style sheets

• Canva – images/book cover

• Printer to print out your work

• What else?

Time

I do all of my one day books in a day. A day for me is 8 hours. This may not work for you, so split your 8 hours up over a period of time that does work for you.

Think of the consequences and rewards of doing this:-

• If you don’t write the book now, you might never write it

• Create rewards and celebrate

Get yourself an accountability buddy. Make sure it's someone you trust and who will keep you inspired and motivated.

Set you intentions on what this book will do for you and your ideal reader. Intentions are where we focus on what we want and answer the question where do we want to go. What is your intention for this book?

Ask why?

• Why do you want to write a book?

• What will it help you achieve?

• How will it make you feel?

ACTION: Do your preparation. We will be covering all of these things. The most important are your why, intention and time.

What you can create in a day

In this lecture I show you the first book that I created in a day. This can now become a template for similar books.Come back to this lecture to remind yourself of the parts of the book.

Front cover - must have the same words as the actual book cover

Legal notices and ISBN number

Dedication

Introduction

Chapters

Resources - where you readers can sign up for a gift and other resources that they can use with the book

Trello is a collaboration tool that organises your projects into boards.

At a glance, Trello tells you what's being worked on, who's working on what, and where something is in a process. It's like a white board, filled with lists of sticky notes, with each note as a task for you.

To learn more head to Trello and take the tour to see if it is for you.

It's easy to set up and use.

Step 1 – Brainstorm ideas

I love to journal and I adore mandalas. There’s something incredibly relaxing about colouring a mandala in while letting a prompt run through your head. I’ve found in my journaling workshops that this is one of the most powerful ways for people to gain clarity. The idea or should I say ideas for my series of one day books were no brainers.

Sometimes we miss the most obvious ideas because we are so focused on creating our big book idea. If you are letting your mind get in the way, take some time out to journal and scribble. Ask yourself, what if I did write a short book, how would that feel?

I can tell you it feels great.

Have a think about what content you have either on a blog or in a course that you could easily re purpose into a simple book. It can be connected to your main business, a business you want to move into or a side hustle. The key is simplicity.

Let’s say that you are a money mindset coach, you could produce a journaling book that takes your reader through your money manifestation process, without all of the explanation that you might reserve for you brand busting book – that can come later.

What if you are a marketing consultant and your blog is full of tips. Need I say more?

Perhaps you are a therapist who specialises in relationships, you could also create a journal that enables the reader to move through a 21 day process of seeing their relationships in another light.

You may have a workshop manual that with a little zing added could become a beautiful book.

Action: Make a list of simple ideas where you know you have the content or can create it easily.

Brainstorm book titles

As part of your idea generation process, make a list of book titles. Let them sit with you. Before you finalise your book, you will have to choose. I know one will leap out.

I find that as I am brainstorming one idea usually comes to me and I go with that.

What about being brave and asking a few trusted friends what they think?

If time allows, head over to Amazon and look there.

ACTION: Make a list and leave them to reflect as the day goes by.

Take a moment

Often at the brainstorm stage our heads are exploding with ideas. Take some time out and let your unconscious mind tell you which is the right book for right now.

The knowledge audit

How to create content from what you have and what you know.

Knowing what we know can be a challenge. For your book, you are leveraging existing articulated content, existing un-articulated content and formulating new content from your ideas. All of which needs documenting, mapping out and aligning to the relevant chapter(s).

To make sense of your knowledge you need to locate it and create a map of where it is, how to access it and where to use it.

Steps

1. For each chapter decide what you have e.g. content in other places which is already created.

2. What you have to create - new content

3. Using a spreadsheet or Evernote, note where all of your content is and note needs to be created

ACTION: Go through your outline and chapter framework and find what you have, repurposed and what needs to be created.

Who is your ideal reader?

Don’t spend long agonizing over this. Get an idea of who this is for. Do the demographics (age, sex, gender), that’s always pretty easy. Then ask:-

• What are their goals?

• What are their values?

• What challenges do they have?

• What are the immediate pain points?

• Where do they normally hangout to get information (books, blogs, magazines, films, gurus’s etc.)?

Action: Draw a quick matchstick person and answer the questions.

What questions are they asking?

This is fairly straightforward, grab some post-it notes and brainstorm 20-30 questions they may be asking you. Put them in some kind order and leave them while you grab a cuppa.

You are asking questions so that you can become clear about how you map your content to the reader journey - coming next.

It is always about what they are asking, not what we think they are asking. If you are not sure, do some research.

Action: Brainstorm questions and put them in what you consider to be a logical order, perhaps in themes or parts and then reflect

Map the customer journey

Do a quick map of which content in which order. You have the questions, so start there. And perhaps it doesn’t matter. Just make sure that it makes sense in some way.

The journey takes your reader from not knowing to a good outcome. you could offer:-

• 21 days to something

• A process - coaching

• Prompts around a theme

Map it out:

• Roll of paper/A3 pad

• Coloured pens

• Map it all out all

• Play and have fun

• Reflect

Action: Create a customer journey map based on your questions, if relevant. Otherwise map the journey in a way that is right for this book. Write out a rough outline, with headings, subheadings and your questions. I've included a detailed outline - just use what works for you.

Assess the gaps

Basically, what do you need to write that you don’t already have?

What content do you have that you can use with minimal intervention? Check what you can re purpose and do a deeper look.

Ask what needs to be written? Perhaps a new chapter or do you need to design some journaling pages? Maybe you want to add in some images?

Action: Access the gaps, making sure that this is not a huge task. Decide how you will fill the gaps. Make a list.

Time for another break.

Congratulations for getting this far. Not long now and you will soon have your book published.

Introduction to working with AI

In this section I shall demonstrate a complete book planning workflow using Claude AI, transforming an initial concept into a fully structured 30,000-word book on self-love organized around heart chakra virtues, complete with ideal reader profile, chapter synopsis, marketing materials, and post-publication strategy including a companion journal and online course.

In this lecture I want to give you an honest introduction to how AI tools fit into the book planning process — and where they don't. I'll share my personal approach: doing the thinking, journalling, and idea-generation first, then bringing AI in to support, challenge, and deepen what's already there. There are many tools available — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot go and research them so that you get a clear sense of what to expect from free versus paid versions and which you like using.

My tip: Do your own thinking before you open an AI tool. Your wisdom and experience are the point — AI is there to draw them out, not replace them. And please, fact-check everything. If something doesn't look right, ask for the sources and go and read them yourself.

Your action: Decide which AI tool you're going to use for this process. Set up your free or paid account before the next lecture.

Setting Up Your Project in Claude

Here I'll walk you through creating a project inside Claude — naming it, writing a brief project description, and giving it enough context to be genuinely useful. I demonstrate this live, using a self-love book as the working example, and show you exactly how little you need to get started.

My tip: Your project brief doesn't need to be polished or complete. A rough description of what you want to write and who it's for is enough to begin. You'll refine it as you go.

Your action: Set up your project in Claude. Give it a name and write two to three sentences about what your book is and what you hope it will do.

Analysing Your Writing Voice

I also show you why getting Claude to analyse your writing style is one of the most useful things you can do before you start — and what to do with the results. I upload a document containing samples of my writing across different genres and audiences, ask Claude to identify the patterns, and share what came back. This isn't about letting AI write your book. It's about making sure that when you need support — bridging a paragraph, checking a chapter, getting unstuck — it already knows how you sound.

My tip: Include writing from different contexts if you have it — articles, blog posts, book chapters, even emails. The more variety, the richer the analysis.

Your action: Gather samples of your writing and compile them into a single document. Upload it to your project and ask Claude to analyse your voice, your patterns, and how you naturally structure ideas. Read the result and note what surprises you.

Writing Your Book Brief and Getting Asked the Right Questions

The most valuable thing AI can do in the early stages is ask you questions you hadn't thought to ask yourself. In this lecture I have already written the first draft of a working brief and it's a bit messy. Then I invite Claude to question me on it.
I demonstrate the process live and I'll be honest with you, the questions go deep. I got quite emotional doing this, because it is a real book and a real story. This is where the actual book starts to emerge.

My tip: Answer the questions slowly. If you need to stop, go for a walk, write in your journal, and come back. The best answers don't come quickly — and that is not a problem, that's the process working.

Your action: Write your book brief. Include your idea or ideas, who you think your reader is, and any sense of structure you have so far — even if it's vague. Upload it to your project and ask Claude to ask you questions. Take your time with every single answer.

The Questioning Process

In this lecture I want to walk you through something I couldn't do live — the questioning process. The reason I couldn't do it in real time is that I genuinely had to sit and think about my answers. I got quite emotional doing it, because this is my story and, although I started this as a demonstration, it became a live book. One I might actually write.

So I want to take you through the screen and show you what happened — because what happens to me in this process is what will happen to you.

Once you've given Claude your brief and asked it to question you, the first thing I want you to remember is this: you are not talking to a human. You are working with a large language model — a database that has learned an extraordinary amount across an extraordinary range of areas. It feels empathetic. It genuinely feels like being questioned by someone who understands you. But it is a machine, and keeping that in mind matters.

What I found is that it reads your brief, tells you there's something worth working with here — and yes, you will generally get positive feedback, though I have known Claude to push back on me, and I've had to tell it firmly that this is the direction I'm going in — and then it starts to ask you questions.

It asked me to share part of my story. I did. It came back with more questions. One of them led me into content I hadn't expected — my self-betrayal quiz, the 12 virtues, the heart project I'd put together. It asked whether I was happy to talk about body dysmorphia. It asked where the 12 virtues had come from. And then it asked what the cost had been.

Every question went deeper than the last.

And then it asked me something I want you to really sit with: What do you want her to feel on the last page?

That question stopped me. Because it's the question that sits underneath everything else we do when we write a book. Every chapter has an outcome. For me, it's always about how I want my reader to feel — not just what I want them to know, but how I want them to feel at the end of each chapter, and at the very end of the whole journey. What will they take away? What will they do next? What will have shifted?

By the time we'd gone through all of that, Claude gave me a synopsis — one I could take, reshape, and make my own. And here's what surprised me: it told me that the structure I'd originally given it might not be right. Which meant that through the questioning process alone, I'd already outgrown my first plan.

That is the power of this.

The questions you get asked will be based entirely on the brief you've given. The more you give, the deeper it goes. And you will get clearer and clearer about your book — not because Claude is telling you what it should be, but because the right questions make you discover what you already know.

My tip: If something doesn't feel right — a suggested title, a direction, a framing — say so. This is a relationship, and you are the one in charge of it. Tell it how you want it to work with you.

Your action: Once you've been through your questioning session, stop. Don't rush straight into building your structure. Go and grab your journal. Go for a walk. Let everything that came up percolate. Scribble. Sit with it. Come back for more questions if you need to. And when you feel genuinely clearer — not just busy with ideas, but clearer — then you're ready to build your structure.

Researching Your Book Market with AI

Before you finalise your structure, it's worth knowing what already exists in your space — what's selling, what readers love, and where the gaps are. Here I show you how to use Claude's research function to get a broad picture of your genre, and then how to take that research onto Amazon to look at actual books, real tables of contents, and genuine reader reviews.

My tip: You are not looking for what to copy. You are looking for what's missing — and what readers are saying they needed but didn't find. That gap is often exactly where your book belongs.

Your action: Ask Claude to research your book's genre — most common themes, books that have performed well, and where the gaps are. Then go to Amazon, search your genre, and look at three to five books. Read the reviews. Note what readers loved and what they wished had been different.

Finding the Heart of Your Book

Sometimes, after all the research and questioning, you still need to be able to say — simply and clearly — what your book is actually about. In this lecture I show you how to use Claude to distil everything you've gathered into a core statement, and then how to use that statement to test whether your structure is taking your reader where you want them to go.

My tip: If Claude gives you options, don't settle for the first one that sounds right. Sit with all of them. The one that makes you feel something — even if it's slightly uncomfortable because it's more true than comfortable — is usually the one worth choosing.

Your action: Ask Claude: based on everything we've discussed in this project, tell me what my book is really about. Ask for five versions. Read them. Choose the one that feels closest, or write your own using what's there. Then ask Claude whether your existing structure actually delivers on that.

Building and Refining Your Chapter Structure

With a clear heart and a solid brief, you're ready to build your structure properly. In this lecture I walk through the process of asking Claude to propose a full chapter outline, reviewing it critically, and going back and forth until the shape of the book feels genuinely right. I discover mid-session that my original structure needs rethinking — and I show you exactly how to work with that rather than against it.

My tip: Treat the first structure Claude gives you as a starting point, not a verdict. Your job is to interrogate it. Does every chapter earn its place? Does the order serve your reader's journey? Keep going back and forth until something clicks.

Your action: Share your brief and core message with Claude and ask it to propose a full chapter structure. Go through it carefully. Mark what works, what doesn't, and what's missing. Go back and forth until you have something you could genuinely write.

Knowing Your Ideal Reader — Going Deeper

You've already met your ideal reader earlier in this course. Now, with a structure in place, it's time to get specific. In this lecture I show you how to use Claude to build a vivid, felt picture of the person most likely to reach for your book — not demographics, but the real texture of their life, what they've already tried, what they need to hear, and what they'll take away.

My tip: Ask for the human truth, not the marketing profile. The more specific and honest the picture, the more useful it is — both for writing the book and for everything that comes after it.

Your action: Ask Claude to help you build a detailed picture of your ideal reader, using your structure and brief. Read it through and ask yourself: does my current chapter structure serve this person? If anything feels off, note it and adjust.

What Will You Do With Your Book?

A book is rarely just a book. In this lecture I help you think beyond the manuscript — to the courses, journals, speaking engagements, live groups, or communities that might grow from it — and show how those plans should shape the way you write it. I share my own vision live and get back a clear picture of what my next steps could look like. It's one of my favourite parts of the whole process.

My tip: Be honest about what energises you and what drains you. There's no point planning a book launch strategy built around things you dread. Let your energy guide the direction — we did that work earlier in this course for exactly this reason.

Your action: Ask Claude: given everything you know about my book and how I like to work, what could I do with this book? Tell it what lights you up and what you'd rather not do. Read the response, choose what resonates, and let that inform decisions that affect how you write — format, length, tone, and what to include.

Writing Your Chapter Synopses

With your structure confirmed, the next step is getting clear on what each chapter is actually doing — not just what it covers, but why your reader needs it at that precise point in the book, and what they'll understand and feel by the end of it. In this lecture I show you how to use Claude to generate a working synopsis for every chapter, and what to do with it once you have it.

My tip: The synopsis Claude gives you won't include your stories, your case studies, or your specific examples. That's your job. Take the framework it offers and fill it with what only you can bring.

Your action: Share your final chapter structure with Claude and ask it to write a two to three sentence synopsis for each chapter, covering: what it's about, why the reader needs it at this point, what they'll understand by the end, and how they'll feel. Take the result away, read it carefully, and begin adding the specific content — stories, examples, exercises — that will make each chapter genuinely yours.

Your Book Synopsis

In this lecture I want to show you how to ask Claude to write your book synopsis — and why having one at this stage, long before the book is finished, is more useful than you might think.

Here's the prompt I use. I ask Claude to take everything it knows about my book from this project — all the conversations, the brief, the structure, the ideal reader, all of it — and write me approximately 300 words in the third person covering: what the book is and why it matters, who the ideal reader is, a sense of the structure, and what makes it different from everything else already out there.

What comes back is genuinely useful. Not just as a summary of where you've got to, but as the beginning of your marketing.

That synopsis is the seed of your back cover blurb. It's the foundation of your Amazon description. It's the thing you put on your website under a "coming soon" page to start building a waitlist — for beta readers, for a group you might be developing around the book, for anyone who wants to be part of what you're creating before it's even finished. You'll write the final versions of those things when the book is done, but this gives you something real to work with right now.

And it does something else. It gives you a framework for the conversations you're going to start having about your book. Because once you have a synopsis — even a working one — you can talk about what you're writing with clarity and confidence. You can share it on social media. You can put it on your website. You can use it to start gathering feedback from the people you're writing it for.

My tip: Read through what comes back carefully and make it yours. Claude will give you a solid starting point but it won't have all your stories, your particular way of seeing things, or the specific warmth you bring. Edit it until it sounds like you wrote it — because in the end, you did.

Your action: Ask Claude to write a 300-word third-person synopsis of your book using everything it knows from your project. Download it, read it, and tweak it. Then decide where you're going to put it — your website, your social media, a waitlist page, or simply a document you keep coming back to as you write. Whatever you do with it, don't just leave it sitting in Claude. Take it somewhere.

The Knowledge Audit — Finding What You Already Have

One of the most underused parts of book planning is discovering how much you've already written. In this lecture I show you how to upload your existing content — blog posts, articles, previous books, workbooks, anything that might be relevant — and ask Claude to tell you what can be used directly, what needs adapting, and what still needs to be written from scratch. I found this session genuinely surprising, and I think you will too.

My tip: Be open to what comes back. You may find that something you wrote years ago fits your new book better than you expected — or that a direction you were planning to take is less developed than you thought. Both are useful things to know now rather than halfway through writing.

Your action: Gather everything that might be relevant to your book — old articles, course content, blog posts, workbooks, journal pieces. Upload it to your project files. Then ask Claude to go through it and tell you, for each piece: how relevant it is, whether it can be used directly or needs adapting, and where it might sit in your structure.

Your Working Title and What Comes Next

In this final lecture I ask Claude to suggest three possible titles and subtitles for the self-love book, talk you through why I like some and not others, and show you how to use your instincts alongside AI suggestions to land on something that feels genuinely right. I'll also reflect on everything this session produced — because the book I ended up planning is not the one I thought I was going to write when I sat down. And I think that's rather the point.

My tip: You can change your title right up to the point of publishing. Don't let the search for the perfect title delay anything else. Choose the best working title you have right now and keep moving.

Your action: Ask Claude to suggest three possible titles and subtitles for your book, with a brief explanation of why each one connects to your ideal reader. Read through them. Pick the one that feels closest — or use them as raw material to write your own. Then write up your working title, your core message, and your chapter structure in a single document. That is your book plan. Now go and write.

A Final Word on Planning Your Book With AI

What a journey we've been on together.

I want to be honest with you about something. The book I ended up planning in this section — the self-love book, with all its structure and chapter synopses and ideal reader and synopsis — was not a book I was planning to write when I sat down. Not at all. I started this as a demonstration for you. And somewhere in the back and forth, the questions and the answers, the research and the refining, it became something real.

That tells you everything you need to know about this process.

Now, I want to be clear about one thing before you go off and do this yourself. At various points in these lectures I've talked about Claude's wisdom and experience — and I want to correct myself on that, because it matters. The wisdom and experience in your book are yours. All of it. What Claude does — what any of these AI tools do — is draw that out. It asks the questions that help you hear yourself more clearly. It organises the thinking you've already done. It gives you logical, structured things back so you can see what you're working with.

You are the one with the story. You are the one with the knowledge. You are the one who has lived what you're about to write.

Don't ever hand that over.

I've put together a document of all the prompts I used throughout this section — the ones that got the best questions, the most useful structures, the clearest feedback. You'll find it in the resources for this module. Pick them up, use them, and — this is important — tweak every single one of them to suit you, your voice, your book, and what you're trying to do. A prompt that works brilliantly for me may need adjusting before it works brilliantly for you. That's not a flaw in the process. That's the process.

I hope this section has shown you what's possible. Not just with AI, but with your own thinking when it's given the right conditions to breathe.

Now go and write that book.

Compile the content

Now you are at the compiling stage. When you write a book, you normally create each chapter and leave the introduction to the end.

You need a blueprint with topics (headings) / subtopics (sub headings) / questions and you are now putting the content into your book in the order that it needs to go in, which is your customer journey.

Open each document and copy and paste your content in. Leave gaps for what you have to write. You will then be ready to write and edit.

Action: Compile your book.